Inside Ghana: Kumawu Doesn't Need A Community Center Now Ghana's Kumawu is going through difficult times and a community center won't solve its problems.

Inside Ghana: Kumawu Doesn't Need A Community Center Now

Published on Sun, Feb 15 2015 by Web Master

By Rockson Adofo

In the midst of the teeming problems of wants confronting Kumawu, it is only a visionless leader that will start solving their pressing wants with the erection of a community centre. From my in-depth knowledge of the urgent needs of Kumawu citizens, the last thing they will expect from any philanthropist, government, or a traditional leader, ready to come to their aid is the provision of a community center.

Kumawu township has for many years now, become a miserable, helpless and dejected victim of savaging erosion. Sharp and pointed stones stick dangerously out of the ground, something that was unknown to people of my age group back in the days when we played our nocturnal games of hide-and-seek. When I proceed on holiday to Ghana, take a walk around the town, venturing into every nook and cranny of it, I am shocked to see how erosion has tortured the top soil of the town, baring the underlying stones that will no doubt hurt anyone who trips over them.

There are no decent public toilets in the town. Many people defecate in the surrounding bushes with the children often attending to the nature's call in their backyards or behind their houses. This unhygienic situation has often given rise to the periodic fatal cholera and typhoid fever outbreaks in the town, claiming many innocent lives.

Kumawu has not seen water pass through the laid underground pipelines for about forty years now. The people have had no access to chemically-treated water for the entire duration that no water has passed through the underground pipelines. Even the pipelines were excavated, gathered into trucks and sold to some scrap (metal) dealers in Kumasi. I quite remember one Dr James London from Kumawu Ankaase putting out a publication in the Chronicles newspaper about this.

In limiting myself to the devastation of erosion on the township, lack of public toilets and lack of access to potable water, discerning Kumawu inhabitants will rather require the provision of such amenities, or see plans initiated to solving them, than having a community centre.

Water, provision of public toilets and checking to stop the erosion are necessities while erection of a community centre is a luxury.

What is a bar of soap to a hungry dog? A hungry dog needs food or bones but not a bar of soap. With the dubiously enthroned Kumawuhene, Barimah Sarfo Tweneboah Koduah (Dr Yaw Sarfo), thinking to woo Kumawuman citizens through the provision of a community centre is not a decision well-thought through, but a myopic aspiration.

I do not want to discuss how he has run into trouble acquiring a land for the proposed community centre. To know the details, you had better contact Kyeame Osei or the Kumawu Anglican Church.

Please, get your priorities right. Did you learn about scale of preference if you studied economics as a subject? No! What is economics to an aspiring medical student?

No matter his good intentions (if he really holds on to any), the people have in their majority of 99% settled for Barimah Tweneboah Koduah V, from the Ananingya royal family, the true matrilineal descendants of Barimah Tweneboah Koduah I, the originator of the Kumawu Koduah Stool.

I do not want to see any misplaced priorities in place. I do not want to see any puppet imposed on Kumawu as her Omanhene who will prostrate to Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, always saying, "Asantehene se, Asantehene na aka". Asantehene has not been mandated to interfere in Kumawuman stool affairs as he is needlessly doing with the current chief.